Adapting healthcare facilities to modern technology is never an easy process, especially when faced with the need to improve IT solutions for a retirement community of over a thousand people. Clear strategies and plans are particularly important in this regard.
This article is my reflection and summary of my experience in managing IT solutions at Yat Tung Senior Health Community, where I am joined by five others. As our healthcare community does not have its own IT operations team, we are responsible for everything from installing and debugging equipment to troubleshooting and maintaining the entire park’s IT.
For some, this may not seem very challenging, after all, how complex can the IT needs of a retirement community be? But for the six of us who are not IT professionals, it is quite a challenge. After many years, I finally decided to find a simple and easy-to-use IT solution to save our team’s mental costs.
Luckily, we found FydeOS and started a partnership with them.
Shared devices are no longer a management challenge.
Healthcare professionals in our community, including nurses and doctors, provide attentive care to our elderly residents while tracking their electronic health records.
Their IT requirements demand simplicity and ease of use, without having to use valuable cognitive resources to learn complex systems.
That is why we have deployed FydeOS-powered information kiosks in key buildings and care centres throughout the community, tailored to the needs of our caregivers.
With FydeOS, caregivers can easily access cloud-based electronic health records for their assigned patients and view relevant data on physical condition, medications, treatments and daily activities to better plan and coordinate care.
Prior to FydeOS, our workstations consisted of all-in-one computers and laptops running Windows.
Over time, the cost of purchasing and maintaining these devices had become increasingly burdensome, while the growing demand for security and management software, as well as operating costs, put significant pressure on the community’s budget.
Reducing the total cost of ownership
There are many factors that need to be considered when upgrading or replacing equipment. For example, many of our previous machines were running the Windows 7 operating system, and some older machines were still running Windows XP.
The cost of upgrading the system licence is an issue – but for many devices, upgrading to the latest version of Windows is not significant due to their long life expectancy.
Based on the experience and calculations of colleagues in the industry, the cost of maintaining a set of Windows enterprise devices over three years can run into the millions. For us, as a small and medium-sized nursing home, this is difficult to afford. So we immediately started looking at alternative solutions.
When we learned about FydeOS, we found that the cost was a small fraction of similar enterprise solutions, and less than half! Roughly speaking, we expect to save more than 170,000 over the next three years.
FydeOS also supports mainstream x86 platforms. Even many of our long-standing machines in the park can adapt to FydeOS and run with no noticeable lag.
FydeOS also supports automatic background updates, so users no longer have to worry about losing progress due to unsaved processes during operation.
Our team members no longer need to service FydeOS devices as often as they do Windows devices. Most of the time we just have to deal with support tickets through the FydeOS cloud management platform.
In addition, the FydeOS system design is read-only for users, which improves security. Once a user has finished using the device, they can erase all traces of use with a single click, effectively protecting user privacy, which is particularly important for most of our shared devices.
We also do not need to add antivirus software to the devices, which greatly reduces our management and maintenance costs.
Most importantly, the FydeOS cloud management platform is designed to be user-friendly and easy to understand, with usable features presented directly.
This greatly reduces the learning curve, and we can issue various management policies with a single click through the cloud management platform, while ensuring the security of user data.
In a short period of half a month, we realised that adopting FydeOS was a successful endeavour.
Brings convenience to healthcare professionals
No matter how much money we save, or how we streamline security and IT management, it will be of little use if healthcare workers and doctors do not want to use the technology.
Fortunately, they have embraced these new devices and we have found that their efficiency has not diminished as we have moved away from Windows systems. In fact, we noticed a slight improvement after just one week.
We pride ourselves on being a cloud-first platform. Our day-to-day productivity solutions are cloud-based, and with FydeOS we can access websites, Android and Linux applications quickly and easily, with a boot time of just 8 seconds! In contrast, Windows, which has been in use for years, can take several minutes to load.
Our staff do not want to be bothered with technical issues. They simply want to deliver the best possible healthcare service to users in the most efficient way.
When you are a busy healthcare professional with a stack of patients relying on you, every minute counts.
Visit our official website https://fydeos.io/enterprise-solution/ to learn more about FydeOS enterprise solution and its features. A free trial is now available, so come and experience it!